Modern satellite communication systems provide a pervasive and reliable infrastructure to distribute voice, data, and video signals for global exchange and broadcast of information. These satellite communication systems have emerged as a viable option to terrestrial communication systems, particularly in the arena of Internet access. As the popularity of the Internet continues to grow in unparalleled fashion, the communication industry has focused on improving network performance.
Sophisticated Internet applications require delivery of bandwidth intensive content (e.g., streaming audio and video), at times, to multiple receivers (i.e., hosts). Traditionally, the source host transmits the streaming media as multiple copies over separation network connections to the receivers, resulting in a large, wasteful consumption of network bandwidth. As a result, multicast services have been developed to minimize the use of network resources by disseminating only a single copy of data from the source and relying on intermediary network elements (routers) to make the appropriate number of copies. However, deployment of multicast services over a satellite system poses a number of challenges with respect to topology constraints, multicast protocol adaptation, bandwidth constraints, and network latency.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for improved approaches for providing multicast services over a bandwidth constrained system. There is also a need for a mechanism that provides efficient use of scarce network capacity.